Rapture
by SteerpikeSister
Summary: A short Phic taking place in Ninj-Novgorod, Susan Kay based. Erik forms an unlikely friendship. rated for angst and death.


Rapture: a Phantom story.  
  
Author's note.  
  
This story came to me as a dream- no, really; it did. Complete and unabridged. It takes place in Susan Kay's Phantom, in Russia, Nijini- Novgorod I hope that you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it, please review if you can- it encourages me greatly. SteerpikeSister  
  
The dark skinned servant set the chair down and left abruptly with an apologetic salaam before the masked magician could even reply in the negative.  
"I will come back soon, Master." He said before scurrying away like an industrious ant.  
The magician sighed heavily and swore in perfectly accented Russian before inspecting the covered chair and its occupant, and swore once more. The man had left a corpse in his tent! The curtain drew back to reveal a man, completely bald with pale grey skin pitted with bloodless sores and lolling head and staring white eyes buried deep in black sockets.  
"Mon Dieu!" he said, shocked. He knew Nijini-Novgorod was a strange and uncouth place, but had had never thought the men who dwelled here would be so ill-mannered and inconsiderate as to leave an anonymous corpse in a stranger's tent! Just then the body stirred into wakefulness and the eyes that had before seemed blind to all that passed before them focused and regarded the Masked Man with not a little curiosity. His head rose from his shoulder and was held erect and he spoke.  
"I think Safir has abandoned me in some strange places before, but never in such unusual company." He said in Russian with a trace of something the Magician could not trace, perhaps Greek or Turkish. "If I may ask, whom do I have the pleasure of meeting?"  
"I am the Masked Magician, and I might ask the same of you!" he replied imperiously, his voice almost concealing his resentment of being interrupted in so strange a manner. He stood tall and straight, folding his voluminous star spangled satin robes and crossing his arms defensively across his chest, and with the inscrutability of one who knows his expression cannot be read, covered as it was by a white porcelain mask, silently dared the sickly looking man to respond.  
"My name is Alexander, Lord Alexander of Samarkand. So you are the mysterious magician I have heard so much about? I think I shall have to see your performance before I die." The stranger said passively.  
"You shall have to hurry. I am planning to leave this wretched excuse for a city when my contract is up."  
The former corpse smiled strangely. "You are right. I do not have long."  
"That is not what I meant, although you look dead already." The magician replied with a sneer in his voice.  
"Do you mock the afflicted, Sir?" Alexander said, one eyebrow rising querulously.  
"I do. I know of no reason why any man should not fall prey to my scorn, arrogant beasts that you all are." He said, turning back to his trick-box that he had been tinkering with when the Asian servant had so rudely interrupted him.  
"Are you not a man, too, Sir?" the pale man said to the magician's back.  
"No. Now kindly leave me in peace. I have had enough of your questions." He said angrily.  
"How can I, Sir, when you claim to be inhuman? You arouse my interest, and for that I thank you; you have distracted me from my affliction with your assertions" Mon Dieu, the man was tiresomely persistent, Erik thought. Surely the man's servant would return soon?  
"What do you want? State your business or leave me in peace! I have no time for your petty concerns. I have enough to deal with as it is!"  
"I want nothing, my dear magician, but that you be civil a moment and indulge an invalid with the knowledge of your name."  
"My name is of no importance. And as for being civil, I have been, up until this point. If you want me to be uncivil you are provoking me to it quite rapidly. I take no pity on you. Were you well you should have the same treatment from me. I defer to no-one on this earth, do you hear me?" he snarled, spinning around to glare at Alexander through the eyeholes in his solemn mask.  
"I expected no less. Why should one not of the Human Race respect any man?"  
"Indeed. We are in agreement. And therefore, let me alone!"  
"Would that I could. Unfortunately neither my enquiring mind or my Servant's absence will allow me to grant your request."  
Erik sighed heavily for the second time in ten minutes. "Why on earth did your servant leave you here?" he asked, suddenly both exasperated and slightly curious.  
"Safir was taking me home from the Coffin Makers. The streets were very dusty and crowded, I expect he went to hire a carriage to travel the rest of the journey."  
"Picking out a coffin? How thoughtful of you. I hope your relatives appreciate your foresight." The magician laughed sardonically.  
"I have no relatives. My household consider me already dead, and spend their time bickering over my possessions like spoiled children."  
"Disgusting. Hardly an environment to encourage recovery." Erik said, his own distaste for humanity causing him to ponder the man's plight despite himself.  
"Oh, it hardly matters to me. I shall be dead in forty one days." Alexander declared dismissively.  
"Are you so certain? You are taking death surprisingly well, if so."  
"I do not know about that. How else should one face the inevitable? Besides, I have something to look forward to."  
"You welcome death?" Erik asked incredulously. He had moved a chair from his workbench and now sat facing the sick lord despite his earlier declaration of disinterest. He had been unconsciously noting the man's symptoms that he could discern and was searching his memory of medicine for the exact nature of the stranger's affliction. The possibility that he could cure him hovered in the back of his mind, leading him to question Alexander further.  
"As I dreamt that this disease should come upon me in my fortieth year, and that one hundred days should then pass before I was to die, so my death was to be accompanied by a glorious ecstasy, a beautiful rapture, and the trumpeting of the Angels themselves."  
"Can nothing be done to spare you this fate?"  
  
"Not poison, not cancer, not consumption or deformation. You have me truly confounded, Alexander." Erik told the man who had in the past week been subject to every medical procedure Erik could dream up. He sat down gracefully on the edge of the man's bed and sighed. Alexander was steadily getting worse. Within a short time his condition had deteriated so much that he could not move from his rooms, and bright light hurt his eyes. During the time he had known Erik, Alexander had come to like the strange man very much; although he understood him enough to know that any display of the affection he felt would curtail the magician's visits to his sickbed, and so he kept his thoughts on the matter to himself.  
"Do not worry so much, Erik. If I can resign myself to my fate then you should be able to do so also."  
"There must be something. Something I've missed, some obvious answer to this horrible riddle."  
"Listen to me, I have something I must tell you, although you might not want to hear it. I am going to die, and there is nothing you can do. Please do not concern yourself. During the short time we have known one another I have enjoyed your company, and felt that had my fate been otherwise we could have been great friends. I trust you will forgive me for my presumption, Erik. As things are, I would still like to call you Friend, if only for the time I have left in this world." Alexander saw the tears in Erik's eyes and did not continue. He had been about to tell him that he had arranged with his lawyer that Erik was to inherit his estate and title, but something told him that now was not the time to tell him. He cast his eyes around the apparent wealth of his home, the rich tapestries and furniture that surrounded him in his last days, and was comforted with the knowledge that everything that had once been important to him would belong to the only person who mattered to him now, after his death. He hoped it would make him happy, as he sensed there was an immense amount of sadness in the masked man's heart. He had never once removed his mask, and although its porcelain countenance was expressionless and beautiful, there was obviously some terrible distortion underneath it that prevented him from finding happiness.  
"Alexander," Erik said, his normally clear and resonant voice hoarse with restrained emotion, "I...would be honoured... to be your Friend..."  
  
As the days passed Erik seemed to resign himself to the inevitability of his friend's death, and instead refused to perform for the fair goers anymore, electing to spend as much time as possible in the company of the man who had become so important to him. Their lively debates and entertaining discussions had become his sole reason to continue living, finding it strange that the most enjoyable time of his life so far had been in the company of a dying man, who, for all his questions had never once enquired as to the reason he wore a mask. Erik knew the time would come when he did ask, and he hoped he would have the strength to deny him any answer, as he might die with him if he ever saw a look of horror or disgust in his dearest friend's eyes. When it seemed they had exhausted every topic under the sun and told each other as much about their lives as they dared, Erik noted with dismay that Alexander's prophesised time was nearly up, and Erik plunged into deep despair and surrendered himself to abject misery, collapsing into heated sobs beside him, his head in his hands, nearly dislodging his mask with the power of his convulsions. Alexander lay, unable to lift his head from the pillow without pain, but reaching out and holding Erik's cold hand in his own, tightly as a drowning man, seeking to console him.  
"You can not leave me..." he whispered, choked with tears and heartfelt words unspoken yet understood.  
"Erik...I am sorry that I have caused you this pain...it was selfish of me to want you here with me..." Alexander whispered back, hating himself for hurting this man who already bore the tortured soul of one doomed to eternal hatred, yet unable to think of this time without joy in his presence, at the end of his life.  
"all this time...you have never asked me..." Erik cried, feeling hot and claustrophobic, the salty tears inside his mask prickly and uncomfortable. He had to take of his mask or he would asphyxiate.  
"Please, do not look at me...I have to take my mask off..." he said.  
"Erik...it does not matter to me what lies beneath your mask., but you need not fear my gaze...my eyesight is dimming...I cannot see far at all..." Alexander told his dearest friend, hoping that this falsehood would soothe him, knowing that whatever Erik revealed he could not react badly. He schooled his face into a passive, unfocused expression in readiness for his friend's comfort and looked into the eyes of Death himself, or so it seemed, as the face he saw was a skeletal visage with only its compassionate green eyes to connect it to his Friend. Erik wiped the tears from his cheeks with his handkerchief and regarded Alexander, who had not moved except to smile at him unbeknownst to himself. Erik understood the unconscious smile was for him. His lie had spared them both any awkwardness concerning his face and his bruised and broken heart swelled with love for the dying man who at death's door could show concern for the feelings of a monster. As the night wore on Alexander slipped deeper into the arms of death, his breathing laboured and his pain obvious. Erik held him close before dawn; cradling the man he loved in his arms at his request, his eyesight truly failing and his end drawing near. As the golden light of the sunrise reached him he cried out ecstatically; "Erik! I feel it!" he gasped, holding Erik tight as he felt wave after wave of pleasure and joy sweep through him, desperately wishing to conduct this rapture to Erik as long as it lasted. Erik shuddered before a feeling unlike anything he had ever felt washed over him: pure bliss. "I feel it too, Alexander!" he replied, tears coming to his eyes once more from the exquisite feelings that continued for what seemed like forever. Erik held Alexander as he convulsed in the throes of death, laughing with tears streaming unheeded down his face, delighting in death and their love for each other that had blossomed so quickly and affected them both so deeply. When it was over and Alexander lay cold and lifeless in his arms, Erik was left feeling calm and contented, Sadness banished from his heart and in its place he felt a strange lightness that he felt must be the last remnants of Alexander's love, something he would keep with him, cherished and untarnished by the passage of time, until he too left this world and found out if there was truly a Heaven or a Hell. If there were, and he was surely damned, he knew, then he would be consoled with the certainty that Alexander resided in Heaven, where he belonged.  
  
Erik had been about to pack up his possessions and leave the Fair the day after Alexander's death. He had been contemplating where he might travel next and had decided to go to the east, to India and seek out the Fakirs that Alexander had told him about when a strange dark skinned man just walked into his tent as if the concept of privacy were unknown to him. He regarded the stranger with a caustic eye as he perused the contents of the tent as if he were making an inventory before he deigned to regard the owner.  
Arrogant peasant, Erik thought, hoping he would go away if he ignored him. He did not. Erik stared at the Persian as if he would burn him with his gaze if he could.  
"The Performance is over for tonight." Erik snarled sarcastically, "If you wish to see my skills you must come back tomorrow."  
  
The End.  
  
Disclaimer:: I wish I owned Erik. Unfortunately, I do not, and never will. Alexander and Safir are my own inventions, as well as the events detailed in this little story.  
  
For all the lovely people who reviewed my other Story, Moonlight and Shadow, I hope you like this one just as much. The Sequel to M&S proceeds rapidly, and should be finished within the month.  
  
SteerpikeSister 


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